Tag Archives: People

Hello Hello! It’s been a little more than three weeks since my last post. I’ve finished up the requirements for the MBA, so I should be back to writing posts with some regularity. Since today’s Monday, I thought I’d restart that series of posting about a cognitive bias on Mondays. Today’s cognitive bias: the halo effect.

The halo effect is essentially believing that someone is good at something because they were good at something else. For instance, celebrities are often cited when talking about the halo effect. Many regard celebrities as beautiful and as a result of the halo effect, surmise that these celebrities are also smart (when in fact, this is not always the case).

There’s a famous study about the halo effect from 40 years ago. Here’s an excerpt:

Two different videotaped interviews were staged with the same individual—a college instructor who spoke English with a European accent. In one of the interviews the instructor was warm and friendly, in the other, cold and distant. The subjects who saw the warm instructor rated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent as appealing, whereas those who saw the cold instructor rated these attributes as irritating. These results indicate that global evaluations of a person can induce altered evaluations of the person’s attributes, even when there is sufficient information to allow for independent assessments of them. Furthermore, the subjects were unaware of this influence of global evaluations on ratings of attributes. In fact, the subjects who saw the cold instructor actually believed that the direction of influence was opposite to the true direction. They reported that their dislike of the instructor had no effect on their ratings of his attributes but that their dislike of his attributes had lowered their global evaluations of him.

Ways for Avoiding the Halo Effect

1) Different strengths for different tasks

One of the easiest ways to avoid falling into the trap of the halo effect is to notice that there are different skills/strengths required for different tasks. As such, just because someone is good at climbing mountains doesn’t mean that they would make a good politician. The strengths/skills required for those two tasks are different. Put another way, think about the strengths/skills required for a particular tasks before evaluating whether someone would be good at that task.

2) Notice other strengths (or weaknesses)

It’s been said that, “nobody’s perfect.” When someone is good at one thing, there’s a good chance that they won’t be good at something else. Noticing that this person isn’t good at someone else may help to quell the urge to assume that this person is good at everything.

If you liked this post, you might like one of the other posts in this series:

It’s been quite awhile since I last did a post in my series of ”Who I’m Following” on Twitter. In fact, it’s been 6 months! That’s almost half as long as I’ve been participating on Twitter. In looking at the some of these old posts (see below) of who I’m following, I seemed to have unfollowed a number of folks. I wish I had kept a list of the people I’ve unfollowed, so I could offer reasons as to why I decided to unfollow some folks. Briefly, I can say that sometimes the reason is because the person isn’t very active on Twitter. Other times, it’s because I became frustrated with the amount of negativity (sometimes in the form of the person retweeting “trolls” or people being unnecessarily negative in the form of ad hominem attacks). I most certainly won’t be able to get to all the new people I’m following on Twitter (it’s approximately doubled!), so look for a few of these posts in the coming weeks (or months).

@brainpicker: “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didnt know you were interested in until you are.”

@changemakers: “The latest in innovation, social entrepreneurship, and how you can make a difference. Why? Everyone Can Be a Changemaker.”

@Ashoka: “Ashoka is an international citizen-sector organization that is leading the way to an Everyone a Changemaker World.”

@TheStalwart: Joe Weisenthal is the Deputy Editor Of Business Insider. “He previously was a writer and analyst for Techdirt.com, and before that worked as an analyst for money management firm Prentiss Smith & Co.”

@sethmeyers21: “Seth Meyers currently serves as the head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody program segment Weekend Update.”

@anjeanette: I found Anjeanette’s twitter feed as a result of this article. “The aspiring actress isnt afraid to let the sarcasm fly  and sometimes thats just the sort of thing you need to pop up on your screen.”

@acarvin: “Senior strategist at NPR. Online community organizer since 1994. Former director of the Digital Divide Network. Writer. Photographer. Dad.”

@AJELive: “Breaking news alerts and updates from Al Jazeera English, a 24-hour news and current affairs channel.” By now, you should all know that I’m a big fan of different perspectives (here or here).

@brianstetler: A really good person to follow if you enjoy things in “meta.” Stetler reports on TV & Media for the New York Times.

@jayrosen_nyu: “I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and study new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.”

@daveweigel: Dave Weigel is a political reporter for Slate. While his main focus is politics, his tweets are often laced with humor.

@markknoller: Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House Correspondent. Similar to Stetler, he sometimes comments on what other networks are reporting.

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I’m well past my self-imposed 1000 word limit, but I wanted to begin to squeeze a bunch more feeds into one post (because I have a lot to make up in this series). As always, I welcome your suggestions in the comments or tweet me!

Finally, finally, finally. I have caught up my ”Who I’m Following” series to the actual people I am following on Twitter. Youll notice a decided conservative-flavor to these Twitter accounts because I noticed I was following a number of liberal folks. As a result, I wanted to make sure I was getting the viewpoint from the conservative side, too. If you missed any of the earlier posts in this series, here they are:

@melissa_e_brown: I went to high school with Melissa  she’s one of the smartest people I know. Shes just finishing up her MBA at Tuck and who knows what wonderful things shell contribute to the world.

@DavidBrooksNYT: He is… “a political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the NYT.”

@ReihanSalam: “I write in the hope and expectation that people read people with whom they disagree to challenge their settled views. Suffice it to say, this isnt generally the case, but Im happy to continue behaving as though it is, as it is true of enough people to justify the effort.” (from here)

And there you have it. You’re all caught up on the the accounts I’m current following on Twitter. As always, if you have any recommendations (based on the flavor of the people I follow in Parts 1 through 7), feel free to leave me a note in the comment section of tweet me.

Its been just about two months since I last updated the list of people Im following on Twitter. I thought today might be a good day to give a brief update. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to catch “all the way” up to who I’m following. In case you missed the earlier posts:

@nycole_turmel: Since the passing of Jack Layton, Turmel has filled in as the interim leader of the NDP. Shortly, the NDP will pick their leader.

@Dahlialithwick: Dahlia is a Canadian (eh?) and mostly tweets about issues regarding law and the court system.

@Number10gov: This is the account of the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron. I’m not sure, but I think the account will stay with the Prime Minister’s office, regardless of party.

@Nouriel: Roubini is a rather famous economist. In fact, he predicted the collapse of the US housing market and the worldwide recession.

@felixsalmon: Felix Salmon is a noted finance blogger for Reuters. He’s won awards for his scientific reporting.

@GOOD: “GOOD is the global association of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits powering what works.”

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As I said earlier in this post, I’ll do my best to catch up to the updated list of who I’m following in the next couple of weeks. As always, if there’s someone you think I might like to follow, leave me a comment, send me an email, or tweet me.

So, without further adieu, here are the people I have followed since my last post.

@joshrogin: Rogin covers national security and foreign policy for Foreign Policy (magazine). He often tweets his column and other things that come up in the news that have to do with national security or foreign policy.

@donnabrazile: In 2000, Donna Brazile became the first African-American woman to lead a presidential campaign (Gore). She’s currently a professor at Georgetown University.

@politifact: Politifact is a project where the staff, “fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups.” This is very helpful in judging the validity (or truth) of some of the things said by people involved in politics.

@NationalDebt: “The National Debt Clock ran out of digits so start following the debt daily on Twitter. (+) or (-) means up or down from previous day’s debt total.”

@MyInfographics: This twitter account focuses on tweeting infographics, particularly those from their own site, which is a collection of the best infographics from around the web.

@hillharper: Hill Harper is best known for playing a character on CSI, but I initially followed him because of his inclination to empowering tweets.

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I’m nearing my self-imposed word limit of (1000 words), so I’ll end this post for now. It’s worth noting that I’ve gone through and “purged” some of the accounts I’ve followed in the past (including some of the accounts in this post) and subsequently, added a slew of new accounts. Look for some of them in Part 6 of this series. And as always, if you have suggestions, leave a comment, send me an email, or tweet me.

@mental_floss: The profile claims that they tweet “amazing facts from the people at mental_floss magazine.” I wholeheartedly agree with that claim.

@billmckibben: From the Wikipedia article about him: “In 2010, the Boston Globe called him ‘probably the nation’s leading environmentalist’ and Time magazine described him as ‘the world’s best green journalist.'”

@pourmecoffee: I follow this particular Twitter feed because it usually has some sort of quirky or funny thing to say about politics or the news. If it’s not something “funny,” it’s usually some kind of cool fact (similar to @mental_floss).

@The_Infographic: I mentioned the other day my inclination towards statistics (and even more so, statistics represented in a visual format). This Twitter account tweets the #dailyinfographic, which is a pictorial representation of a subject and statistics about said subject (the subject varies with each infographic, of course).

@consumerreports: From their profile on Twitter: “Consumer Reports is published by Consumers Union, the worlds largest independent consumer-product testing organization. Our mission: Test, inform, and protect.”

@GreenProgress: This Twitter feed posts updates about green technology and the environment, as well as research and even advice from time-to-time.

@flowingdata: More of the same with regard to data and visual representations of said data. He wrote an excellent book called “Visualize This,” which you can read more about here.

@infobeautiful: Once again, more of the same with regard to data and visual representations of said data. There are some cool things that come from this Twitter feed.

@earthinstitute: This is the Institute that @JeffDSachs is the director of, (whom I mentioned in Part 2). From their Twitter profile: “Mobilizing the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth.”

@JerrySeinfeld: As with Conan, Fallon, and the other comedy-related people I’ve mentioned before, it’s important to laugh. I used to love watching Seinfeld (the show) and now I love following Seinfeld (the Twitter account) because he has some great one-liners.

@EricStangel: Stangel is the head writer for the Late Show with David Letterman, and according to his profile, he was named one of Time’s 140 Feeds to Follow.

@ResearchBlogs: This feed collects the best blog posts about peer-reviewed research around the internet. Since peer-reviewed research is wide-ranging, there are a variety of subjects that are tweeted about.

@infosthetics: Another data visualization Twitter feed. An interesting fact about this one: the person behind it is an Associate Professor at K.U.Leuven (a University in Belgium).

@GillianDaws: A really smart person who tweets about everything from soccer to food to farmer’s markets and everything in between.

@GeekStats: I love statistics. This particular Twitter account offers up some stats that you probably wouldn’t have otherwise known.

@ThinkTankedWaPo: From its Twitter profile: “Allen McDuffee reports on the world according to think tanks.” I think (ha, no pun intended) that there can be important information gleaned from think tanks.

@lessig: Lawrence Lessig is the the founder of Creative Commons. He’s also a professor at Harvard and is quite the political activist.

@NYTimeskrugman: Paul Krugman is a professor of economics at Princeton University. He also writes for the New York Times. He also won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2008.

@mitchellreports: Andrea Mitchell is the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC News. She also has a pulse on the happenings in Washington.

@davos: The Twitter feed of the World Economic Forum. There is an annual meeting in (Davos, Switzerland) of business leaders and international leaders, among others, who come together to discuss issues facing the world.

@AlecJRoss: Alec J. Ross is the Secretary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation. He is affectionately known as Clinton’s “tech guru.”

@Ed_Miliband: Ed Miliband is the Leader of the Labour Party in the UK. I tend to lean towards liberal/progressive views, so I tend to be interested in parties in other countries who support these same ideologies.

@LukeRussert: Luke Russert is following in the footsteps of his father, Tim Russert. He covers Capital Hill (in Washington) for NBC News.

@chucktodd: Chuck Todd is the Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News. From his Twitter profile: “And, yes, I tweet about sports too.”

@andrewsorkin: Andrew Ross Sorkin is a financial columnist for the New York Times and in 2009, he wrote the “tell-all” book about the financial collapse called, “Too Big To Fail.”

@ariannahuff: Arianna Huffington is best known for being the co-founder of The Huffington Post. If you get the chance, I’d highly recommend reading her biography.

And there you have it. You’re up to date on the current list of who I’m following. Maybe in another month or so, I’ll do another post (if I’ve accumulated a bunch more people to follow). As always, feel free to follow @JStanghini!

It’s been over a month and a half since I listed the people I’m following on Twitter in (Part 1 and Part 2) and the number of people I’m following has nearly doubled (or maybe it has more than doubled?), so I thought I would do another post *new* listing the people I’m following.

@TRPF: This is the organization by famous scientist, Nassim Haramein. Their website can be found at The Resonance Project. I highly recommend checking out some of Nassim’s videos. He’s an uber-smart guy and has some fascinating ideas about the unification of all science and philosophy.

@tferriss: The brilliance behind The 4-Hour Workweek and more recently, The 4-Hour Body. If you’re into efficiency, Ferriss is your guy. He has outlined some very interesting principles for reducing the amount of time you spent at work and for reducing the amount of time you need to spend at the gym (to get into better shape).

@DanielPink: Pink is a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton and a very smart guy. His book Drive is a must-read for anyone who wants a better understand what motivates humans. He also writes entertaining blog posts, from time-to-time.

@MMFlint: I first learned of Michael Moore during my freshmen communications course. We were having a discussion about Bowling for Columbine. Michael Moore is extremely liberal and it’s interesting to see how he criticizes even the Democrats.

@BreakingNews: I really like this particular account because the news that is offered from it is (from what I’ve seen) relatively neutral. I’ve only ever seen “facts” tweeted from this account.

@ConanOBrien: I think it’s important to laugh and many of the tweets that I see from Conan are highly entertaining. I don’t watch his show, but it’s nice to get a dosage his comedy 140 characters at a time.

@PressSec: This is the official White House Twitter account for the White House Press Secretary. This account doesn’t tweet very often, but when it does, there’s usually something important being said.

@TheDailyStat: This account publishes (once a day during weekdays), Harvard’s The Daily Stat. I really like statistics and it’s even better when they are in this short snippet and easy to digest.

@kingsthings: This is the Twitter feed for Larry King. Larry posts some interesting things from time-to-time. He’s interviewed some of the most important people of the last half century, too, so I’d say he knows a thing or two about the world.

@jimmyfallon: I follow Jimmy Fallon for the same reason I follow Conan O’Brien – comedy. It’s important to laugh and Fallon has some great one-liners!

@MaddowBlog: Similar to the first person I followed (@maddow), this feed is the blog of the The Rachel Maddow Show. This particular feed tweets some of the blog posts that are posted to the blog. It’s nice to have it in a Twitter feed rather than a newsletter or always having to check the site for updates.

@RepKucinich: Somewhere along the way, I realized that there was more than one account for (@Dennis_Kucinich). I noticed that they tweet slightly different things, so I now follow both.

@tomhanks: I really like some of the roles that Tom Hanks has played and I’ve also enjoyed watching interviews with him (to get a sense of the kind of person he is). As such, I now follow him.

@JuliaRoberts: My favorite actress as a young boy. She has yet to tweet anything, but this is her verified account, so should she decide to tweet, I’ll know it!

@SteveMartinToGo: I follow Steve Martin for the same reasons I follow Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon — comedy!! Martin has a different sense of humor, but I still find it entertaining.

@Lawrence: I consider Lawrence O’Donnell to be a really smart guy. I don’t necessarily always catch his show (The Last Word), but I think he presents an intelligent perspective on the things that are happening in the news.

@aplusk: I was reluctant to follow celebrities who had an enormous amount of followers (A. Kutcher has over 7 million as of this post), but I kept an eye on what Kutcher tweeted. It’s a nice blend of a variety of topics, so I’m in!

@WhoopiGoldberg: Similar to (@JuliaRoberts), Whoopi Goldberg is saying she won’t participate in Twitter very much, but is just putting up a Twitter account so that people don’t steal her ID. I’ve read some of her interviews and liked her stuff. Hopefully, she decides to engage with her followers and Twitter.

@pewresearch: Just like I’m following @TheDailyStat, Pew Research tweets all sorts of interesting (at least what I perceive as interesting) statistics.

@mattyglesias: Matt Yglesias writes for a number of different blogs (and he posts links to them once written). He’s known as being a pretty loud voice from the liberal/progressive point of view (in the United States).

@TheEconomist: This is one of the most reputable international publications. It has been around for over 150 years and publishes very important perspectives on a number of issues.

@tedtalks: I wrote about TEDTalks in yesterday’s post, so you know how I feel about how important they are. This feed tweets when new TEDTalks are uploaded. If you like TEDTalks, this is a good account to follow.

I’m just about at 1000 words. Check back soon for Part 4 of “Who I’m Following.” In the meantime, feel free to follow me.